Due to the growing world population, freshwater sources including streams, rivers, springs and lakes are at risk of becoming polluted, or are polluted. According to current World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, approximately 3.4 million people die from water borne illnesses each year. Many of these illnesses are caused by Giardiasis, cryptosporidium and fecal coliform such as E. coli. According to a 2007 WHO report, 1.1 billion people lack access to an improved drinking water supply and 88 percent of the 4 billion annual cases of diarrheal disease are attributed to unsafe water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene. Disinfecting of water to remove or render inactive pathogenic organisms minimizes the epidemiological risk of a population by providing safe drinking water.
Larger population centers employ water plants that specialize in treating and monitoring source water for the surrounding population. Water treatment plants are expensive to build, require a large amount of space, and utilize conventional technology using costly chemical, mechanical and electrical devices. Unfortunately, despite all the safeguards, even water treatment plants may not successfully treat 100% of the water due to volume and distribution. For instance, it is not possible to maintain proper flow rates in all distribution lines. The building of a municipal water treatment plant requires forecasting that may or may not prove viable. Purified water can quickly become recontaminated if placed within stagnant lines. For this reason treatment plants typically use ozone or chlorine as a treatment step and attempt to maintain a residual within the distribution lines. Chlorine will kill disease-causing bacteria that the water or its transport pipes might contain. Unfortunately chlorine reacts with other naturally-occurring elements such as tannins to form toxins called trihalomethanes. Trihalomethanes have been linked to a wide range of human health maladies ranging from asthma and eczema to bladder cancer and heart disease. For this reason, chlorine is no longer used in very large doses so even large treatment plants can be distributing contaminated drinking water. Ozone is a highly effective treatment for bacteria but has minimal residual time.
In addition, while treatment plants service larger population centers, millions upon millions of people do not have access to professionally treated water. Such lack of access can be due to location such as a rural environment that may rely upon untreated spring or well water. Individuals who are remote from treated water, such as hiker, mountain bike riders, even soldiers need water but may not have access to treated water.
Early portable water disinfection options include boiling of the water, use of iodine tablets or chlorine tablets. As technology advances, more portable drinking water options have been developed which include advanced filtration techniques.
What is needed in the art is a device that allows for manually operated hydrodynamic cavitation to provide a portable treatment device for disinfecting water.